Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Sallie Barker (Mrs. Walter B.) Hill, 1851-1937
By Geneva Williams, student at Aragon High School, San Mateo, CA and Serene Bennett Williams, faculty at Sacred Heart Preparatory High School, Atherton, CA
Vice President, Women's Suffrage Party of Georgia
Sallie Barker Hill was born on September 1, 1851 in Macon, Georgia to George Rogers Barker and Sarah Barker. She married Walter Barnard Hill and they had four children together: Parna, Roger, Walter, and Mary. Mary's husband Walter was well known throughout the state of Georgia as both a lawyer and chancellor at the University of Georgia. They were married until his sudden death in 1905.
Sallie Hill was active in a variety of campaigns for reform throughout the first few decades of the 20th century. In 1909, Sallie Hill wrote a report on public school houses in southern states and shared her report in Charlotte, North Carolina. This was at the twentieth session of the Southern Educational Association. She also wrote numerous letters of support to suffragist and white supremacist Rebecca Latimer Felton, who was also from Georgia. Felton was the first woman in the U.S. Senate and much of their correspondence took place before Felton served in Congress.
In 1904, Sallie Hill served as chairman of the state club of an educational conference. The goal of this group was to work to improve school buildings, create school libraries, and enhance school curriculum and gardens. In 1914, Mrs. Sallie Hill was elected vice president for the Women's Suffrage Party in Athens, Georgia. Mrs. Mary L. McLendon was elected president of this group in the same year.
On December 23, 1905, her husband Walter B. Hill, the Chancellor and beloved faculty member of University of Georgia, died. He was a member of the Methodist church and one of the leading educators of the south. Sallie appears to have traveled quite a bit after his death and her letters to Felton were written on a variety of hotel stationery. Sallie Hill died on November 7, 1937 and is buried in Oconee Hill Cemetery in Clarkesville, Georgia.
Sources:
1)Ancestry.com. U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.
2)"Death of Walter B. Hill Saddens Entire State" The Atlanta Constitution, December 29, 1905
3)"Educators Meet in Charlotte" The Raleigh Times, December 28, 1909
4)"Georgia Deaths, 1914-1927." Index. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2007. "Georgia Deaths, 1914-1927" and "Georgia Deaths, 1930," images, Georgia Department of Health and Vital Statistics, Atlanta, Georgia.
5)Harper, Ida Husted, ed. History of Woman Suffrage, Volume 6, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30051/30051-h/30051-h.htm#Footnote_37_37
6)Letter to Rebecca Latimer Felton from Mary C. Hill, 1914 https://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/guan/0081/pdfs/harg0081-005-010.pdf
7)Letter to Rebecca Latimer Felton from Mary C. Hill, 1915 https://www.senate.gov/senators/FeaturedBios/Featured_Bio_Felton.htm
8)"Many Congratulations Wired to Women's Edition Workers" The Atlanta Constitution, June 7, 1913
9)Mathis, Ray. "Walter B. Hill and the Savage Ideal." The Georgia Historical Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 1, 1976, pp. 23-34. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40580241.
10)"Mrs. Mary L. 'Lendon Heads Suffrage Party" The Atlanta Constitution, February 8, 1914
11)"Putnam Names Committee" The Atlanta Constitution, December 7, 1904
12)Rebecca Latimer Felton https://www.senate.gov/senators/FeaturedBios/Featured_Bio_Felton.htm
13)"Sallie Barker Hill" Find a Grave https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/29142466/sallie-hill
14)"Saturday Morning, June 23" The Atlanta Constitution, April 26, 1906
15)United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900. T623, 1854 rolls.